ReHIPS forum

English Subforum => Developers' Blog => Topic started by: fixer on July 27, 2017, 02:13:06 PM

Title: [FAQ] RulesManager
Post by: fixer on July 27, 2017, 02:13:06 PM
So RulesManager. What is it? It's an extended and highly customizable RulesPack which was initially meant for domain corporate edition. And what was RulesPack? It's one of the ways to make ReHIPS rules, take a look at one of my previous blogposts here https://forum.rehips.com/index.php?topic=9529.0 As a sneak peek I'll tell you we'll replace RulesPack with this tool in the next major build (ReHIPS 2.3.0).

What to do with it? Put default.rdb and RulesManager32/64.exe (according to your OS bitness) in ReHIPS folder. RulesPack and RulesManager are interface-compatible, so ReHIPS will use RulesManager instead of RulesPack if it finds it and it'll use rules database from default file default.rdb. If you have ReHIPS 2.3.0+, you already have RulesManager and default.rdb, so you don't have to do anything.

If you start RulesManager without any parameters, it'll show GUI. There you can open rdb file and settings file (this was meant to edit settings and distribute domain version with customized settings, but you won't need this feature). RDB file is Rules DataBase, you can edit it in any way adding new products, deleting or editing them, saving in separate rdb files, exchanging them, etc.

It shows a tree similar to main GUI. The first level are products, the second one are files. Products (for example, Office) may consist of several files. Product is similar to isolated environment, one product=one isolated environment, may contain several files.

When rules are being installed, files should be found and added to the ReHIPS database. There are 2 ways to find a file:

1. it's a preinstalled file (like explorer.exe), it's found by path assembled from KNOWNFOLDERID https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd378457(v=vs.85).aspx and hardcoded file path+name;

2. files that can be installed in random location (any installable software like Firefox), these are found by uninstall information from the registry (DisplayName value), the same name you can see in Control Panel-Uninstall Software, path is taken from InstallLocation registry value and is appended by hardcoded file path+name.
Hardcoded paths support wilcards. It may not be easy to get your head around it, try to take a look at predefined rules and feel free to ask if you have any questions.

And there is one more non-familiar thing: Special Folders. When some software is installed (for example, Office), it may store settings in real user home profile folder or in HKCU registry hive. Being isolated this software won't have access to either of these locations. But we'd like to keep settings, so these settings have to be copied, that's what Special Folders are for, these folders and registry keys are copied from real user profile to ReHIPS user profile.

Other than this quite complicated stuff, the rest is pretty much the same as in main GUI, same access rights, permissions, etc.
Title: Re: [FAQ] RulesManager
Post by: Umbra on July 29, 2017, 05:30:00 PM
It was a nice  reading, now just have to wait beta v2.3.0 :P